why does the Maxi escape from the flack?

[alcyonecorporation]

Austin Maxi - interior flat.jpg

 

If only dogging had been a thing in the early '80s - Austin Rover could have really filled a hole in the niche market, as it were.

 

Massive glass area, and wipe-clean vinyl upholstery, too. Streets ahead of any velour-clad Renault 18, that's for sure.

 

Ah, the missed opportunities...

Yea but it's no Nash Airflyte, is it?

Good tyres on those Nashes, I hear.

[theorganist]

I don't understand why the Maxi would be considered a failure. It was in production for more than ten years and sold about a thousand a week for that time.

They didn't compete in the weird British "company car" sector dominated by Ford, they were bought privately and introduced the hatchback idea to many.

 I knew several Maxi owning families in those days, they were well liked and often replaced with another Maxi.

 

Precisely, I suspect if they carried on till the mid/late 80's they still would have had a following. Obviously in 1980 they were looking old fashioned, they were a 1960's design but they were not old fashioned when they came out especially with advanced suspension, hatchback, transverse engine and a five speed box. They were still selling well in 1980 despite having changed very little from the 1969 design where in the same time the Cortina had gone from mark 2 to mark 5!

[John F]

Old-fashioned doesn't even begin to cover it, the Maxi never really got rid of the stench of austerity & powdered egg that infested a lot of post-war British designs.

 

And those flat-folding seats were kept firmly in the upright position 'cos all the party gurls were dropping their knickers to get into these...

 

[AnthonyG]

The 1969 Maxi front end was redesigned by Roy Haynes, a Ford stylist who joined BL in 1968. He also did the Mini Clubman, so its not surprising they look similar!

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Haynes_(designer)

 

The original BMC Maxi design had a sort of prow to it - a bit like a Viva HB. There was also a Maxi saloon planned, which was binned as soon as Stokes set eyes on it. The saloon looked a bit like an Austin Kimberley (Aus landcrab update from 1970) - Haynes said it had ‘zero showroom appeal’. Haynes also did the Marina before he left BL in 1970, and at Ford did the Cortina Mk2.

 

There are a couple of pictures of these early Maxis in the Barney Sharrat book ‘The Austin’.

[adw1977]

Loads of detail on the Maxi, including the saloon prototypes on the AROnline website.

 

https://www.aronline.co.uk/cars/austin/maxi/

[AnthonyG]

People took the piss out of Rover for making the SD1 a hatchback but revered BMW for the brilliant idea of making the 5 series GT.

I’m not sure about the 5 series GT - it’s sold in tiny numbers and hasn’t been replaced with the new 5 series. The 3 series GT has also disappeared without trace, whereas the 4 dr 4 series has sold very well indeed.

[dozeydustman]

I quite like this styling prototype for the Maxi, though it was panned in-house. The prow and point to the front end make the car look a lot less dowdy, which for me was the failing of the car - it was too bland looking

 

[MorrisItalSLX]

There was also a Maxi saloon planned, which was binned as soon as Stokes set eyes on it. The saloon looked a bit like an Austin Kimberley (Aus landcrab update from 1970) - Haynes said it had ‘zero showroom appeal’.

If I’m not mistaken, the Maxi saloon was just an Austin Kimberley with a maxi snout and dash grafted on.

 

The was also a Vanden Plas Princess prototype based on the Kimberley cooked up in the BL laboratories, it survives to this day.

[adw1977]

If I’m not mistaken, the Maxi saloon was just an Austin Kimberley with a maxi snout and dash grafted on.

 

 

The rear end of the Maxi saloon was different to the Kimberley and would have used the same lights as the Maxi hatchback.

[MorrisItalSLX]

The rear end of the Maxi saloon was different to the Kimberley and would have used the same lights as the Maxi hatchback.

Ah, Maybe I was thinking of an Aussie built Kimberley prototype using Maxi bits.

 

I have definitely seen a picture of it!

[Bmwdumptruck]

Had a Maxi as one of my first vehicles, in some ways my first proper car.  
After passing my test my dad initially lent me a Viva Ha van that he’d aquired from a customer. He’d got it running just around the time I passed my test and had ended up unemployed and then self employed, so it suited to have a van for my early days as a plumber.  A year on dad shut his business down and as it was the business that owned the van it had to be sold and I didn’t have the necessary funds to buy it, although I seem to recall it eventually sold for not much more than I had at the time.  Anyway, I bought a scruffy Marina van off another of his customers for £150.  A few months on I took the Marina down to my Uncle n Cousins garage in Devon and got them to blow it over to tidy it up. That week my cousin  got a request to find a local business a van asap so he sold them my Marina.  Literally hours out of the spray booth.  So now I’m stranded in Devon with no motor?  Said Cousin had just taken in a Maxi from a local old lady looking to downsize.  This only having 45k on it and being pretty tidy and he could do it for £400 having sold my van for £1000, so I headed home with some cash in my pocket for a change.  
Well I kinda hated it.  I mean absolutely zero coolness whatsoever. Certainly didn’t help with the ladies at all. I had it about two years, felt like ten……. 
But……looking back you gotta wonder how it fails to get it’s just plaudits.  I mean compare it to what become the staple car of the 90s into the 00s and up until the SUV revolution of the last decade. It really and truly was the forerunner of the modern era 5door family hatchback.  The basics are all there, starting with the basic shell layout. 5 door hatchback, fold flat rear seats, front wheel drive giving much larger interior space compared to it’s rwd competitors.  Also a wheel at each corner style, while ford and vauxhall still gave long overhangs, especially to the rear.  Front wheel drive transverse engine layout and even better an OHC engine. How many years before Ford truly caught up on that one!!  Oh and the standard five speed gearbox.  Could you call it independent suspension?, not sure but still pretty advanced compared to the old live axled escorts/cortinas and vivas of the time.  
Having read through this thread I can’t quite see the issue with the reused doors, when I owned mine I never had any issues with them. They opened and closed, let you in and out, and seemed to fit the shape and design of the car ok.  
It’s a shame BL didn’t see how close they were to maybe leading the market.  If only they’d developed the O series engines into it, if they’d done that with the Maxi2 along with a new 2ltr top spec model, it may have had an even longer life…. Although I seem to remember dad hating the O series for something stupid in it’s design.  
 

[Rocket88]

8 minutes ago, Bmwdumptruck said:

Had a Maxi as one of my first vehicles, in some ways my first proper car.  
After passing my test my dad initially lent me a Viva Ha van that he’d aquired from a customer. Hekd got it running and just around the time I passed my test and had ended up unemployed and then self employed it suited to have a van for my early days as a plumber.  A year on dad shut his business down ans as it was the business that owned the van it had to be sold an I didn’t have the necessary funds to buy it, although I seem to recall it eventually sold for not much more than I had at the time.  Anyway, I bought a scruffy Marina van off another of his customers for £150.  A few months on I took the Marina down to my Uncles garage in Devon and got him to blow it over to tidy it up. That week my cousin, working with his dad, got a request to find a local business a van asap so he sold them my Marina.  Literally hours out of the spray booth.  So now I’m stranded in Devon with no motor?  Said Cousin had just taken in a Maxi from a local old lady looking to downsize.  This only having 45k on it and being pretty tidy and he could do it ofr £400 having sold van van for £1000, so I headed home with some cash in my pocket for a cahnge.  
Well I kinda hated it.  I mean absolutely zero cooless whatsoever. Certainly didn’t help with the ladies at all. I had it about two years, felt like ten……. 
But……looking back you gotta wonder how it fails to get it’s just plaudits.  I mean compare it to what become the staple car of the 90s into the 00s and up until the SUV revolution of the last decade. It really and truly was the forerunner of the modern era 5door family hatchback.  The basics are all there, starting with the basic shell layout. 5 door hatchback, fold flat rear seats, front wheel drive giving much larger interior space compared to it’s rwd competitors.  Also a wheel at each corner style, while ford and vauxhall still gave long overhangs, especially to the rear.  Front wheel drive transverse engine layout and even better an OHC engine. How many years before Ford truly caught up on that one!!  Oh and the standard five speed gearbox.  Could you call it independent suspension?, not sure but still pretty advanced compared to the old live axled escorts/cortinas and vivas of the time.  
Having read through this thread I can’t quite see the issue with the reused doors, when I owned mine I never had any issues with them. They opened and closed, let you in and out, and seemed to fit the shape and design of the car ok.  
It’s a shame BL didn’t see how close they were to maybe leading the market.  If only they’d developed the O series engines into it, if they’d done that with the Maxi2 along with a new 2ltr top spec model, it may hve had an even longer life…. Although I seem to remember dad hating the O series for something stupid in it’s design.  

Trouble is, BL at the time seemed to wilfully design cars with no “ showroom appeal”. A hangover from the Issigonis culture, which was almost Stalinist in it’s total refusal to consider that driver ergonomics and creature comforts were to be considered to be desirable 

[bangernomics]

When I was a kid and my dad bought one between good cars (how do you go from a 3.0s capri to a maxi dad!!! How!!!) it was a source of great misery and derision amongst my peers.

Divorce apparently.

Was actually an ok a car but calf shit yellow with a red wing. Great.


Gzongenflatch
In memory of Phil.

[Spiny Norman]

Holy thread resurrection Batman...
They don't escape the flak from me, I've always thought they were shit.

Fun fact, there are 19 letters in the word that commonly gets shortened to 'flak', and none of them are a c...

[adw1977]

2 hours ago, Bmwdumptruck said:

Having read through this thread I can’t quite see the issue with the reused doors, when I owned mine I never had any issues with them. They opened and closed, let you in and out, and seemed to fit the shape and design of the car ok.  

That's exactly the problem, the shape and design of the car had to be fitted around the doors and that made it look old fashioned in 1969.

[High Jetter]

I've had a few Maxi's, just typical BL of the era. Very practical cars, especially for courting 😀

[HMC]

On 30/05/2018 at 08:39, HMC said:

It's because Chevy chase rated them for their pre NCAP cyclist safety credentials.

I stand by the points i made 6 years ago. 

[lesapandre]

Look better in the metal than pictures - quite low on the road - and parked with modern cars they look very neat.

They probably drive ok - never driven one.

Underdeveloped and rushed to market by the new BLMC under Donald Stokes.

Biggest reported problem was the cable gear change - a completely daft idea given the engineering parameters. Unreliable and no interest from the fleet market.

No MG or VDP or Wolseley version - no hot version inhibitor to sales.

Awful Terry and June marketing - awful frumpy colours. Not much rally or race history to give the car some reputation.

Wilfully under-developed as money went elsewhere to develop Allegro. 

Total lost opportunity.

[sierraman]

It just looked obsolete at the side of everything else, it just reinforces my belief they should have given  a one way ticket in the fifties. Sacking him I mean, contract killing him might have been excessive.
 

Also those fucking doors, they were obsessed with using them. 

[Bmwdumptruck]

Nope, sorry, still really don’t see why the doors are so abhorrent to so many of you. If you took one off laid it on the ground next to a cortina door from 69 and a vx4/90 one from then they’ll all look much the same, or only as different as any door from any make of an era.  Just like doors of the 80s and 90s all look pretty similar. At least until one make brings out something new anyway.  Always remember looking at the first Audi 100 doors with their flush fitting glass system, even made my dads CX look out dated even though it was brand new at the time. 
Seems the main issue is they used doors off another model, hardly a first and only slightly less wrong(?) than full badge engineering surely.  Not really such a henious crime really.  And I still think the overall look of the Maxi is just rather plain and simple, hardly ugly. 
I get the really crap management, although I think a large part of that was also down to the unions and how they tried every trick in the book to control these businesses back then.  Not sure Vauxhalls management were much better, or Fords or the rootes lot.  All were struggling with huge inflation and unions pulling strikes for the smallest issue.  
It was a period of massive change in the design of cars. All of them were trying all sorts of new ideas, engine layouts. You only have to look how just about every main stream brand now follows one basic layout design. FWD, transverse 4 cyl engines next to a gearbox, mcpherson strut front suspension, outboard disc front and rear brakes.  
Prior to this we had rear engined imps and beetles, v4 and flat 4 engines in common family cars, fwd with inline engine both in front and behind a transaxle gearbox, engine over gearbox like the minis and maxis, front engine rear transaxle gearboxes like alfas.  Pretty much don’t see anything like that now.  Ok there are the odd one here and there, but en mass the basic std car design has been transverse engine and box fwd for pretty much 3 decades.  
Bringing together all the various BL brands brought some weird engineering together, rover dedion rear ends, jags Irs, both with inboard brakes. Marinas rather dodgy front suspension shared with MGs, Minors and a few others, the ones with trunions and lever dampers.  Happy to see that design go.  Rack n pinion steering is another example, not much out there these days without it.  
We can look back and see where most brands missed opportunities to develope ranges and models, and yes I can see how BL seemed to refuse to work as a combined business.  And not then developing their designs to iron out the flaws.  Having grown up in Triumph saloons;how I wish they’d developed both the stagV8  into the 2000saloon and estate models, and the DollySprint 16v engine into the TR7.  By develop I mean fix the issues they just seemed to ignore as if there was nothing wrong with them.  
Even though I recall not liking or even appreciating the Maxi when I had mine, I have to admit, looking back I’d still have it over the Cortinas and Vivas of the time.  I ended up working at my cousins garage 90-92 after my uncle retired.  I drove all manner of cars including a few proper old classics, Armstrong Siddelys amongst others, and I have to say the ones I hated driving more than anything were the old ford and vauxhall live axle models.  Ye gods those things had a mind of there own where they went, wallowing along swinging side to side over bumps and undulations, even Sierras didn’t improve much on this.  I can remember driving early FWD 1.3 Astras and 1.6 Cavaliers and thinking how much better they were to drive.  Oh and an early Golf was just fabulous, they really were the cream of the crop. 

[Asimo]

Be as rude as you like about the Maxi but in it’s day it was a damn good “an car”, almost everybody’s  first hatchback, almost everybodys’s first five-speeder. There were thousands and thousands of them sold, they were morbidly practical, relatively economical and no more unreliable or short lived than other car products of the day.

These days car-aware people snigger about the doors; back then nobody noticed nor cared any more than they cared that almost every contemporary car had the same type of Lucas alternator.

And, as I have posted before, there was no car more likely to offer a hitch hiker a lift, than a Maxi.

[chaseracer]

Vauxhall and Ford did the door-sharing thing too.

[AnthonyG]

The Escort Mk2, Cortina Mk4/5 and Granada Mk2 estates used the previous cars’ entire bodyshell! - just with updated panels for the wings, bonnet and front end - but Ford did it with such chutzpah and marketing smoke and mirrors no one noticed.

OK, so maybe people noticed the lack of effort on the Escort, and very few Brits would have been aware of the 1970 Taunus TC so thought the Mk4 Cortina was all totally new, but the fact remains if BL had done the same they would have been roasted. 

 

[plasticvandan]

My grandad worked at Longbridge in the 70s, Nightshift quality inspector on the allegro line... Throughout he ran two Maxis,and were the only BL cars he rated and owned, maybe he knew something?

[motorpunk]

9 hours ago, lesapandre said:

Terry and June

Brilliant description. The Maxi described in just three words.

[AnthonyG]

I believe the Medfords actually had a Princess. Possibly a company car from Terry’s employers, who made fire extinguishers.

God, the things I remember 😂! 

Sybil Fawlty definitely had a Maxi though. 

[lesapandre]

Sales figures were about 45,000 Maxi sold per annum - in comparison in 1973 for example the Ford Cortina made 181,616 sales. Its all about sales and profits in the end.

BLMC cars were considered unreliable - contemporary car magazines report that - maybe not particularly Maxi but it tarnished the whole range.

Though all that is set aside now - I will have to get a drive of one sometime. Very interesting car. 

So many BMC/BLMC cars were brilliant just often let down by details.